From the mathematicians and scientists of the 20th centuries to today's ninja craftsmen/craftswomen, Software community has lost something along the way. Instead of carefully observing scientific methods and maintaining objectivity, we have tangled ourselves in web of hype and celebrity culture - as if adopting today's YOLO motto. We have completely forgot how to reason scientifically about matters of technical dispute, instead, whoever is more opinionated or shouts louder wins - as if software is an abstract art where you can only form an opinion.
11. @aliostad
Postmodern thought is broadly
characterized by tendencies to
epistemological and moral relativism,
pluralism, self-referentiality, and irony.
Wikipedia
/// Coincidence?
13. @aliostad
“In Modern architecture
we have operated too
long under the
restrictions of unbending
rectangular forms sup-
posed to have grown out
of the technical
requirements of the frame
and the mass-produced
curtain wall.”
/// Architecture
19. @aliostad
/// so what??
• Objectivity looked wrong in the face of
relativism (subjectivity)
• Scientific methods as the driving force
of modernism lost some clout
• Elements of magical thinking and
fantasy entered into our culture
• In short, the burden of proof has
disappeared
22. @aliostad
/// example
“What Slack is amazingly good for, is communities. It’s better than
Twitter and Facebook groups for communities.”
“We know slack is cool and there’s no denying that it has its uses,
but it just didn’t work for us.”
“We have experienced a great increase in team-wide communication
since moving everyone to basecamp”
29. @aliostad
/// How does science work?
• Mathematical Proof
• Empirical Evidence
Burden of proof lies with whom
claiming to change state of the art.
30. @aliostad
“The required techniques of effective
reasoning are pretty formal, but as long as
programming is done by people that don't
master them, the software crisis will remain
with us and will be considered an incurable
disease.”
Edsger Dijkstra
40. @aliostad
/// difference
engine
In 1823, the British government gave Babbage
£1700 to start work on the project… By the
time the government abandoned the project in
1842, Babbage had received and spent over
£17,000 on development, which still fell short
of achieving a working engine. The
government valued only the machine's
output (economically produced tables), not
the development (at unknown and
unpredictable cost to complete) of the
machine itself.
Charles Babbage
45. @aliostad
/// re-cap
Burden of proof lies with whom
claiming to change state of the art.
Just be aware of the impact of post-
modern thinking in your tech life…
Try bringing objectivity and scientific
reasoning back to every important decision.
Remember “… we come from a long line of scientists”
46. @aliostad
http://blogs-images.forbes.com/centurylink/files/2015/05/decision-making.jpg
By Scanned from a copy, and intellectual property owned by Spire books., Fair
use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2243801
http://www.unicornsrule.com/wp-content/uploads/rainbows-unicorns.jpg
http://1.viki.io/d/1863c/8b75dc48c9.gif
https://medium.com/@lelper/why-our-team-stopped-using-
slack-32ba64977fad#.p106z78k9
http://blog.keithcirkel.co.uk/why-we-should-stop-using-grunt/
http://blog.varunarora.com/why-we-stopped-using-drupal-for-our-platform/